Leechburg Area School District moves drop-off area to accommodate fire department

Leechburg Area School District parents and bus drivers will no longer be allowed to drop off students before school in front of the high school cafeteria on Siberian Avenue, district officials said Tuesday.

Officials said that drop-off area causes traffic backups on First Street, and those backups could prevent firefighters from being able to get to fires.

Superintendent Tiffany Nix sent an email to district families Tuesday informing them of the change. She said people now “must pull the whole way to the stop sign at Siberian and Second Street in front of the elementary school office” to drop off students.

“Please be advised that I received a call today from a fire department official. Due to safety and throughway issues for fire trucks on First Street, we are no longer permitted to drop off students via car or bus in front of the cafeteria,” Nix wrote. “This may cause a small walk for the kids.”

Leechburg Volunteer Fire Company Chief Tom Foster said he reached out to Nix about the problem after his firefighters weren’t able to get to the station during an early morning fire call last week.

Morning drop-off and afternoon pickup tie up First Street for about 10 to 20 minutes every school day, Foster said.

“I asked (Nix) if we could move the buses to the corner of Second and Siberian and line them up along there to drop the kids off so you didn’t have buses stopped on the hill, hence people with cars stopped on the hill, so we could keep First Street open,” Foster said.

The traffic backups have been an ongoing problem, police Chief Jason Schaeffer said.

They could impede not only fire trucks but other emergency vehicles as well, he said.

“What if an ambulance needed to get up that street and they were stuck in that traffic and somebody had a heart attack? Somebody’s going to die because they’re stuck in traffic,” Schaeffer said. “It shouldn’t be that way. I’m worried about everybody’s safety.”

Schaeffer said the system should work if people pull up to the stop sign at Second Street and Siberian Avenue.

“That leaves a whole entire block, from First to Second, for drop-off,” he said. “Then it wouldn’t be dangerous for anybody.”

Foster said last week’s fire call ended up being a standby — in which firefighters are on-hand to assist another emergency service if needed — but he needs personnel in the station for those calls.

“Some of my guys came to me and said, ‘Look we got to do something. We can’t get down here. It’s impeding our response time,’ ” Foster said. “We’re not trying to be bad people. We’re just trying to be safe and trying to keep the road open so we can get emergency traffic through.”